


Oath Of Office

by NinthHouseSword



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, Not much beyond that, Wedding Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 16:01:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30007383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NinthHouseSword/pseuds/NinthHouseSword
Summary: A summer wedding, with a medium amount of fuss.
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Nicole Haught
Comments: 1
Kudos: 41





	Oath Of Office

It isn’t like her fingers shake, doing up the buttons. 

She’s done it a thousand times before. The shirt stays at just the right tension, and her fingers are quick. It’s mindless, the flip of the shirt collar up, and then back down as she settles the tie. Then the heavy slide of the jacket across her shoulders, careful to keep the frogs from catching on the threads of her shirt. 

Touch wood, she’ll do it a thousand times hence. 

She takes a deep breath, ribs tight against the weight of cotton and wool, and the woman in the mirror does the same. Brass buttoned, and polished, and her hair in a smooth braid.

A thousand times, but never like this again. This will be the last time. She knows it. The same way she knows how it feels to heft her own S&W, or the swallow of muscles against the first sip of coffee. The sense, and the memory, and the knowing.

The woman in the mirror pivots, smooth on a single heel, and marches out.

*  
Waverly smiles, when Nicole clatters down the stairs.

“You better go break a mirror,” her fiancée tells her, but Nicole just cocks her head. “You know, destructive interference?” She grins, taps her fists together, like ill omens smashing against each other. “Breaking a mirror cancels out seeing my dress before the wedding.” 

“That so?” Nicole slides a step forward. Wavelry slides a step back.

“Yup.” 

“Seems unbalanced, though.” She steps. “Seven years, for one measly little glimpse.” Hands out, cutting off the escape. “I think we’d need to manufacture a little more bad wedding luck.” 

“How?” Waverly’s nearly into the corner. 

“Gotta be pretty dang unlucky to see what’s underneath that dress.” 

“Nope!” Waverly laughs, and dodges around the pocket, the rippling billow of her skirt, and the strong morning light, and the beating of Nicole’s heart. All of it. Sense, and memory, and the moment. 

Nicole lunges. Clumsy, and too late. Waverly squeals, and spins, and is gone through the arch into the living room.

“That was disgusting,” the doorway says.

Well, the woman who is now leaning in the doorway. One shoulder against the wood and her hair a riot down her back. A squint around her eyes, and an unbridled aggressiveness in the skinniness of her velvet lapels.

“You look good,” Nicole tells Wynonna, who switches to grinning, wolfish and sharp.

“And you look like a goddamn narc.”

“But fancy,” Nicole winks, shooting her cuffs.

“Awww, Nicole,” Wynonna ambles over to tweak at some imaginary lint. “Haught stuff is just a nickname.” She pats the lint-free fabric.

Not for nothing though, all those months spent building an Earp-To-English lexicon. Nicole catches her hands, squeezing gently. “It’s okay, Wynonna.”

“It’s okay that you’re a Haught cop, but not a hot cop?” 

“To feel things.”

Nicole watches it: how it hits, and how it ripples out, because Wynonna hasn’t been a mystery in a long time. “Gross,” she mutters, but she leans inward.

“Sure,” Nicole says, instead of something straightforward like feelings aren’t actions, or feelings aren’t wishes, because nothing makes an Earp flee faster than unbridled sentiment.

“Yeah, fine, whatever,” Wynonna mutters, but she isn’t pulling away, either. She’s lingering, just like she always does. Never realizing what she sees as the edge is really part of the nexus. A tightly packed molecule. “People with a lot more letters after their name than you have, told me all kinds of shit about all kinds of feelings.”

“Yeah, but, were any of them Best Friend?”

The on-the-job masterclass in non-verbal communication hadn’t really been for nothing, either. Wynonna’s face has always been an entire universe, caught inside a microexpression. Love, and pride, and longing. 

Not that pre-Purgatory Nicole would have believed how much of that OTJ training would really be on-the-Homestead training, back when Nedley had watched her trace wet ink onto the signature line of her employment contract.

_C’est la vie_ , though. Nicole proposes, and Purgatory disposes. Plunge down the road less traveled. 

Whatever. 

It wasn’t like she’s going to start arguing about where she’d ended up. Time to cut to the chase, though. This family needs at least one person who will actually say things.

“Waverly loves you, Wynonna. She always will. No matter what you feel.”

It causes a whole new ripple. Wynonna wide-eyed, then slumping, then stiffening. A time lapse camera, but only for those with enough patience, enough luck, to find the lens.

“Yeah, well,” Wynonna flicks her eyes down gold buttons and worsted wool. “We both know Waverly’s never had very good taste,” she grins hard, straight into Nicole’s eyes. “Has she, _champ?_ ” 

“I love you, too.” 

“Jesus,” Wynonna hisses, yanking her hands out and stalking away. But only to the counter, and only to lean against it peevishly and snatch up a coffee cup.

A ‘coffee’ cup. 

“Marriage has already made you soft and disgusting. I can’t believe I’m going to have to put up with this emo bullshit for the rest of my life.”

Nicole takes the cup, sniffs, then takes a long sip under the aegis of Wynonna’s smirk. “One for courage,” she hands the cup back. “Now stop being a dick, and come be my best man.” 

“Fuck sake,” Wynonna mutters, morose, but right at the edges of her lips is something she only gives to her family.

*  
For a while, best-manning seems to involve letting Nicole have the coffee cup, and making sure she never sees the bottom. Plus herding her away from wherever Waverly happens to be. 

Then Nedley arrives, his shitty old unit bouncing and shuddering, and Wynonna melts somehow away, until Nicole is standing alone by the back gate.

“Look at you,” he says, and Nicole can see his eyes are already shining. “A goddamn Purgatory Sheriff, done up better than I ever looked.”

“No,” Nicole says, just between them. “A Purgatory Sheriff’s deputy.” 

“Oh Jesus, kid,” the shine in Nedley’s eyes has moved into his voice. “You can’t just say things like that.” But Nicole shrugs.

“Just because I became Sheriff, doesn’t mean I stop being your deputy.”

“Technically,” Nedley starts, but Nicole shoots him a look. 

“Does Chrissy stop being your kid, just because she grew up?”

Nedley gives it up, and starts to make a little snuffling noise.

“No!” Nicole points a finger at him. “You suck that up, right now. If you do, I will. And if I do, Waverly will. Then Robin and Jeremy, and then everyone, and whatever Wynonna does will be your fault.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Nedley tells her, gruff as he hands over a flask.

In for a penny, Nicole figures, and tips it back. “But, uh,” she licks her lips. “Any last minute advice?”

Nedley glances away, and back, and just like Waverly’s laughter had been in her eyes, Nedley’s decades alone are in his, all the hard moments, and all of the once that had been sweet.

“Love isn’t everything, no matter what the greeting cards say, but respect is the foundation of the world.”

The shriek, high and shrill, snaps them both around. Knees bending, gun hands open and reaching towards duty belts. They laugh at each other, rueful, as Wynonna tries to spray Jeremy with a frothing bottle of champagne. 

“Also,” Nedley says, looking out into the vista. “Keep in mind that when you marry the girl, you marry the family.” He pins her with a deep look. “I recommend a lot of insurance.”

Nicole can’t help it. She laughs.

*  
They do it in the lichyard. 

Jeremey stands behind the arbor Doc had built, and Wynonna had laced with ribbon and flowers. Rachel leads a cow down the center aisle, a crown of daisies yellow against its white poll, and white against dark hair. Nedley, holding a mug emblazoned with a X in the lattice of his hands, cradled where it can best see the proceedings.

“Do you, Nicole,” Jeremy starts, and when Nicole says _I do_ it's another binding oath, in a life full of them.


End file.
